Principal Software Engineer - Online Experience

With a career at The Home Depot, you can be yourself and also be part of something bigger.

Position Purpose:

The Software Engineer Principal helps shape the architecture behind the customer-facing experiences on homedepot.com, supporting four product teams in our Online Experiences portfolio: MyAccount Self Service Returns and Modifications, Lists and List Builder AI, Projects, and Pro Account Dashboard. Together, these teams help customers return and modify orders on their own, turn plans into materials lists with generative AI, let Pros manage projects and move quotes to orders, and bring Pro account activity together in a single dashboard. You will set technical direction across these teams, making decisions that affect customers. Our teams use AI heavily across the software development lifecycle, and you will help shape how we do it well. You will contribute to software design, development, and the full product lifecycle for products our customers love. The engineering process is highly collaborative: you will pair with teammates, work closely with Product and UX partners, field questions from other product teams, and encourage cross-team collaboration. You will create reusable foundational code, architectural diagrams, and documentation, define service level objectives, and take part in performance tuning, testing, and production monitoring. As an extremely knowledgeable engineer across these teams, you will demonstrate expertise in modern software design and development and build and grow the skills of more junior engineers.

Key Responsibilities:

• 70% Delivery & Execution
• Collaborates and pairs with other product team members (UX, engineering, and product management) to create secure, reliable, scalable software solutions
• Documents, reviews and ensures that all quality and change control standards are met
• Writes custom code or scripts to automate infrastructure, monitoring services, and test cases
• Writes custom code or scripts to do "destructive testing" to ensure adequate resiliency in production
• Creates meaningful dashboards, logging, alerting, and responses to ensure that issues are captured and addressed proactively
• Contributes to enterprise-wide tools to drive destructive testing, automation, or engineering empowerment
• Identifies product enhancements (client-facing or technical) to create a better experience for the end users
• Identifies unsecured code areas and implements fixes as they are discovered with or without tooling
• Identifies, implements, and shares technical solutions that can be used across the organization
• Creates and architects foundational code elements that can be reused many times by a product
• Creates meaningful architecture diagrams and other documentation needed for security reviews or other interested parties
• Defines Service Level Objectives for product to constantly measure their reliability in production and help prioritize backlog work
• 20% Support & Enablement:
• Fields questions from other product teams or support teams
• Monitors tools and participates in conversations to encourage collaboration across product teams
• Provides application support for software running in production
• Proactively monitors production Service Level Objectives for products
• Works with vendors and the open-source community to help identify and implement feature enhancements in software products
• Works with other product teams to create API specifications and contracts for shared data
• Proactively reviews the performance and capacity of all aspects of production: code, infrastructure, data, and message processing
• Triages high priority issues and outages as they arise
• 10% Learning:
• Participates in and leads learning activities around modern software design and development core practices (communities of practice)
• Learns, through reading, tutorials, and videos, new technologies and best practices being used within other technology organizations
• Attends conferences and learns how to apply new technologies where appropriate

Direct Manager/Direct Reports:

• Typically reports to the Software Engineer Manager or Sr. Manager, Technology Director or Sr. Director.

Travel Requirements:

• Typically requires overnight travel less than 10% of the time.

Physical Requirements:

• Most of the time is spent sitting in a comfortable position and there is frequent opportunity to move about. On rare occasions there may be a need to move or lift light articles.

Working Conditions:

• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Must be eighteen years of age or older.
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States.
• Mastery of an object oriented programming language (preferably Java)
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States

Preferred Qualifications:

• 6-8 years of experience
• Mastery of a modern programming language such as Java, Python, or JavaScript/TypeScript
• Mastery of a modern web application framework such as Node.js
• Mastery of writing SQL queries against a relational database
• Mastery of a version control system (preferably Git)
• Proficient in modern front-end technologies and frameworks such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and ReactJS
• Proficient in a Linux or Unix based environment
• Proficient in a CI/CD toolchain and safe release practices such as feature flags and phased rollouts
• Proficient in test-driven development, effective unit test creation, and end-to-end test automation using modern testing methodologies and frameworks
• Proficient in destructive testing methodologies and tools
• Proficient in a cloud computing platform (preferably Google Cloud) and the associated automation patterns they provide
• Proficient in production systems design and defensive coding practices, including High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Performance, Efficiency, and Security
• Proficient in modern microservice-based architectures and methodologies, and in frameworks for building them such as Spring Boot
• Proficient in successful application of design patterns
• Proficient in a NoSQL database
• Proficient in query optimization and troubleshooting
• Proficient in effective data modeling within both SQL and NoSQL databases
• Proficient in designing and implementing RESTful and GraphQL APIs, including GraphQL services that aggregate data from many upstream services
• Experience working with 12-factor methodology and understanding its benefits, and able to demonstrate appropriate patterns to more junior team members
• Experience building or integrating generative AI and LLM-based services, such as agent-based workflows (Vertex AI/Gemini a plus)
• Experience using AI-assisted tools across the product development lifecycle, and coaching other engineers to use them effectively
• Experience with front-end performance optimization (bundle size, load time) and production observability and monitoring

Minimum Education:

• The knowledge, skills and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program or equivalent degree in a field of study related to the job.

Preferred Education:

• No additional education

Minimum Years of Work Experience:

• 6

Preferred Years of Work Experience:

• No additional years of experience

Minimum Leadership Experience:

• None

Preferred Leadership Experience:

• None

Certifications:

• None

Competencies:

• Action Oriented: Taking on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy and enthusiasm
• Business Insight: Applying knowledge of business and the marketplace to advance the organization's goals
• Collaborates: Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives
• Communicates Effectively: Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences
• Cultivates Innovation: Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful
• Drives Results: Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances
• Global Perspective: Taking a broad view when approaching issues; using a global lens
• Interpersonal Savvy: Relating openly and comfortably with diverse groups of people
• Manages Ambiguity: Operating effectively, even when things are not certain or the way forward is not clear
• Manages Complexity: Making sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems
• Nimble Learning: Actively learning through experimentation when tackling new problems, using both successes and failures as learning fodder
• Optimizes Work Processes: Knowing the most effective and efficient processes to get things done, with a focus on continuous improvement
• Self-Development: Actively seeking new ways to grow and be challenged using both formal and informal development channels
• Situational Adaptability: Adapting approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations

For California, Colorado, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nevada, New York City, Ithaca (NY), Westchester County (NY), and Washington residents:
 

The pay range for this position is between $140,000.00 - $240,000.00